Diario de key_ball134

USA, California, Sacramento County, Antelope (Appears as Roseville on some of the observations, but this is because the area is kind of on the border of the two cities), 38°43'29.3"N 121°23'40.7"W, 25m, 04 May 2020 Coll: K. Ball
Furthest point traveled to was 38.734706°N, 121.391008°W, about 25m elevation
Method: Hand+containers, Net
Time: 2:00 PM - 7:00 PM

The day was warm and clear, and the winds were low. By the time evening rolled around, it cooled down quite a bit, but it wasn’t cold by any means. Still a comfortable cool / slightly warm (if that makes sense). For this outing, I tried to get out earlier to try and see more insects out in the warmer parts of the day. Since things are getting close to the end, I decided to stay out for several hours to catch as much as I could. At this point, many of the flowers in this field are withering away, and many of the grasses are dying out. It is definitely easier to walk around here, as it seems many of these really annoying spiky green plants that can poke you through jeans are gone.

My goal was to skip over the part of this site that I have already spent a lot of time in, but I kept seeing many insects I had not yet caught or observed, so I spent a solid couple hours in the field area in proximity to the side of the road. It was easier to access some different areas and plants/trees with some of the field dying back. Many leaf hoppers, ladybugs in various life stages, hoverflies, especially on/near flowers, and plant bugs, as per usual. A LOT of leafroller tortricidae moths were flying about and resting inconspicuously on the underside of leaves. Found this one large plant with tiny white flowers that had a lot of carpet beetles on them. I also saw a snake fly hanging out on a leaf here but missed it! Luckily I stumbled across another one flying around out in some grasses I sat in a little later. On a nearby plant, I saw this wildly patterned bug I thought was a plant bug but turned out to be a bush katydid! On a nearby tree I noted what seems to have been a chalcid wasp, but my only pics of it aren’t great and it flew away before I could try to catch it. One plant I wandered by had LOADS of aphids on it. May have had some other insects mixed in with them, but I haven’t had a chance to take a look at the ones I collected and post up to Inat. There was a ladybug chillin’ on top of one of the densely packed portions of the stalk having a field day!

Pressing deeper into the field, close to where it slopes down to a trail that runs under the road I came from and towards creek access, there were still many tall grasses alive and well and a few flowering plants still holding on to their vitality just beyond a patch of mostly dying grasses. Saw some butterflies flying around here, including more California Pipevine swallowtails, a bright yellow butterfly, and this really cool red white and black butterfly that perched high on a large leaf (I elected not to post my pics of this one because the colors don’t look right in the picture on account of the zoom and distance). In some dead grasses, I found another hair-covered caterpillar of the same sort I found on my last trip, a pupa I can’t identify, and a darkling beetle in a sandy/coarse substrate patch amidst the dead grasses. Also around this area, I managed to catch one of the many mayflies that were out and about this outing (it’s an American rubyspot), a black plant bug with swollen black lobes on one of their antennae segments, a click beetle, and a leaf beetle that looks like a grey ladybug. On a LARGE tree leaf I also found some LARGE soldier beetles that caught my eye.

Moved down the slope onto the trail that runs under the road I entered from. A LOT of mayflies congregating on the damp dirt. Caught a harlequin bug on a plant, saw another hairy caterpillar on a mossy log, caught another, smaller, soldier beetle that looks a lot like the large ones I found, and caught a few miscellaneous dipterans I haven’t identified and posted yet (look like muscidae and hoverfly though) and saw a few I didn't capture or photograph. At the creek I saw another american ruby spot with beautiful red patches on its wings, an earwig with really large, rounded pincer-like cerci, and caught what may have been a water strider?? Haven’t looked at it more closely since catching it/haven’t put it on iNat. It’s rather small, but I did catch it as it went from sand to walking on the water…. Shortly after this catch some guy who seemed to own a home on the other side of the creek told me I was trespassing and seemed quite annoyed by my presence. I kind of wish I tried to talk him into letting me stay for like 15 more minutes because I was JUST STARTING TO GET AROUND TO LOOKING IN THE WATER and there was a white butterfly in the area I was hoping to catch. But… he seemed annoyed and I didn’t wanna press my luck so I headed back the direction I came from. On my way back out to the road, more or less retracing my steps, I saw two flies mating and caught them. They might be tachinidae, but I can’t quite tell. I have to spend more time looking at them. Also caught a couple little snout beetles on some plants on my way out.

Species list:
Mexican bush katydid
Plant bug
Snake fly
Harlequin bug
Brown leather-wing beetle
Darkling beetle
Underwing, tiger, and tussock moths (family name) caterpillar
European earwig
Emma’s dancer dance fly
American Rubyspot male and female
Snout bark beetle
Plant bug (genus closterotomus and a different, black one)
Click beetle
Chalcid wasp
Carpet beetle
Different snout/bark beetle
Leaf beetle
Soldier beetle (may be same kind as the brown-leather wing beetle but at a different instar stage? Looks very similar other than the legs which are quite different. I’ll check it for wings later to assess whether or not it’s an adult
Family pieridae butterfly
Unidentified pupa
Tortricid leafroller
Black fly
Carpenter ants
Diptera 2x (must be same species b/c were mating)
Diptera
Ladybugs
Other various ants
Yellow jackets

Species account:
The species that caught my eye most this trip was probably the pieridae butterflies that I sporadically saw around in the field. I feel like I’ve seen a few of these around in my yard in the past, and I think they’re quite pretty. Definitely not as showy as the other butterfly species, but there’s something kind of pretty about their simplicity. I kept seeing these guys around my past couple outings to this area, but I never got the chance to really get close enough to one to try catching it. They’re always just out of reach or fly way far away before I get a chance to move closer. This includes one I was trying to follow around by the creek before being told I was trespassing ;-;. BUT the one I caught caught my attention in particular because of the circumstances around its capture. I was walking up the side of the road back to my house, erring on the side of walking through some tall grasses to be as far from the pavement as possible. One patch of grass I kicked through ended up startling one of these out! I instantly dropped all my things into the field and went after it with my net. Luckily, and I don’t know if its because these are weaker fliers or this one was just a little disoriented, I managed to net it out of the air after a couple attempts before it had a chance to escape to a field on the other side of a fence. I also got a little diptera in my net with it as a bonus.

USA, California, Sacramento County, Antelope (Appears as Roseville on some of the observations, but this is because the area is kind of on the border of the two cities), 38°43'29.3"N 121°23'40.7"W, 25m, 15 April 2020 Coll: K. Ball
This time explored deeper into this site than I usually do. Furthest point traveled to was 38.734706°N, 121.391008°W, about 25m elevation
Method: Hand+containers, Net
Time: 5:00 PM - 7:15 PM

Went on a 4th outing to the vegetation on the side of the road near my local creek. No winds, quite warm day, few clouds. It was quite a warm day, so I had a feeling there would be more insect activity here than there would usually be. My goal was to from the outset move down to where the creek is and walk around the creek bank / the riparian corridor just off the creek bank. When I first arrived, though, I encountered so many insects just in the first area I spend most of the trips out to here in that I got a little held up. Off the bat, while trying to catch something else, I noticed a small cricket that wandered onto my belongings I had set down. Managed to catch directly with a container. Unfortunately, there were quite a few insects I saw and wasn’t able to catch: A mayfly (I think, I didn’t get the best look at it but pretty confident based on how its abdomen looked), a dragonfly (could have been damselfly, but wings and size seemed more dragonfly-esque), a white butterfly, and a cuckoo wasp. Commonly sited species were of course everywhere: Myriad leafhoppers, ladybug pupa and adults (even found some mating), bees on the flowers, small moths in the grasses, plenty of mosquitos. I also caught another swallow-tailed butterfly of the same species as the one I already have. When I came to about the edge of the area I usually poke around in, I found a scarab wedged into a flower.

As I moved around deeper into this site, I encountered dipterans of all sorts and caught many with a combination of netting and trapping them directly in containers. Included in this were some green bottle flies, but I left them alone since I already have a couple. Many dipturans were seen sitting very still on leaves, including a yellow dung fly I caught near the creek that was feeding on a smaller fly. When first moving down a slope to a sandy trail that led off to the creek bank (passes under Watt and follows the creek on the map, but no creek access from this area because of terrain), I found what I thought was a tipulidae in a tree. Turned out to be a short tailed ichneumon wasp! Close to the creak I found a rad hairy caterpillar, and I spotted a dragonfly but messed up my netting when I tried to catch it. I also found a moth that I thought was a plant bug at first glance until INat corrected me. When returning from where I came from, I swiped my net through a cloud of small, swarming insects. I thought these were gnats, but upon looking at my catches, they seem to be little dance flies! When leaving through what is, for me, the well-traversed part of this site, I saw a small round-ish brown, hard-shelled insect in a foxtail. I have seen these around here many times before, but every time I try to catch them, they drop out of the foxtail they’re sitting in and hide in the grasses. Managed to catch this lad. On my way home, caught a moth on the side of the road amongst some small roadside trees and overgrown grasses.

I have a couple night outings I was planning on logging, but this is long enough and I'm a little pressed for time currently anyway so I'll probably just post what I found to iNat over the weekend or over the next couple days!

Species list:
Dung fly (Yellow)
Dung fly I can’t identify further
Sulphur Tubic
Acalyptrate fly I’m having trouble IDing. I think it’s a a drosophilidae or a tephritidae?
Dance flies
Leaf hoppers
Tiny tiny red-white bug (I think it’s a hemipteran)
March fly
Hover fly
Click beetle
Leaf Beetle
Scutelleridae
Ophion wasp
Hoplia scarab
Western Tussock Moth larva
Ladybug pupae and adults
Apidae
Gryllidae

Observed but not photographed/logged to Inat:
California Pipevine Swallowtail
Dragonflies
White butterfly
Cuckoo Wasp
Mayfly

Species account:

The species that caught my eye most was the cuckoo wasp I saw. It was on the trunk of a large and dead tree, moving around on it looking for… well I’m not exactly sure what. What, of course, caught my eye about it was its bright metallic-green color. It stands out quite a bit compared other insects I’m used to seeing, and ESPECIALLY on the brown of the tree bark. I was also very curious about this insect because of the way it was moving. It’s FAST! I felt like I was watching a stop motion film with the way it moved around really suddenly and in a jerky stop-start fashion. It’s kind of hard to describe but that’s the best way I could put it. Additionally, it was moving its antennae around quite a bit as though it was sensing around for something? Though in some videos I looked up of the cuckoo wasp (to try and confirm its identity by movement pattern), this kind of antennae movement seems to be common behavior for these insects. Looking into cuckoo wasps to be sure it’s possible for me to have seen one, I was surprised (and excited) to learn California actually has quite a bit of species diversity for this kind of wasp and that they are common in this state. For whatever reason (probably the cool and showy coloration) I assumed these would be less frequently occuring or kind of rare. This is the second time I’ve seen one in the same area more or less doing the same thing - walking around on tree trunks/limbs. HOPEFULLY the third time will be the charm for catching one of these lads. The first time I saw one that flew away before I had a chance to get close. This time, I had a chance to try directly catching with a container, but I missed 3 attempts. It flew away after the third :(.

USA, California, Sacramento County, Antelope (Appears as Roseville on some of the observations, but this is because the area is kind of on the border of the two cities), 38°43'29.3"N 121°23'40.7"W, 25m, 15 April 2020 Coll: K. Ball
Method: Hand+containers, Net,
Time: 6:45 PM - 7:00 PM

Cool evenings, no winds, clear sky, sunny, but on verge of dusk.
Cameron, in a comment on one of my observations, noted that there appeared to be scale insects in the photos that I misidentified as galls. So, I took a brief outing to the place the picture was taken to see if any were still there (The area I described on the side of the road and near a local creek in Journal 1). As I moved through the grasses here, I immediately noticed LOTS of tiny leaf hoppers jumping around to get clear of my path. I also saw a lot of brightly colored, hardened constructs on a lot of the leaves of the overgrown plants and grasses. I suspected them to be ladybug pupae, as there were a LOT of larvae all over the plants in this area last time I was here. Plus the constructs seemed very… pupa-esque. Unfortunately, no scale insects when I reached what I’m pretty sure was the tree the pictures I referenced earlier were taken. I did get bit by a lot of mosquitos though. Saw some ladybugs and tipulidae and plant bugs while out as well, all of which tend to make frequent appearances when I go on outings. As I was walking down the road back home, I decided to check out a few of the plants growing on the roadside. One leaf I happened to turn over had some kind of fly on it, and I caught it in one of my collection containers. Upon IDing it, I realized it was a drone carpenter ant!

Roadside 3:

USA, California, Sacramento County, Antelope (Appears as Roseville on some of the observations, but this is because the area is kind of on the border of the two cities), 38°43'29.3"N 121°23'40.7"W, 25m, 20 April 2020 Coll: K. Ball
Method: Hand+containers, Net
Time: 7:00 - 7:45 PM

Cool evening, low winds, moderately cloudy, around sunset.
Took another outing to the roadside vegetation near a local creek since there seems to be a lot of insect activity going on out here all the time. Just spent all my time walking through the vegetation, which is about up to my shoulders in height, often crouching down to search through any particularly leafy patches with my hands or the end of my net. Again, MANY leaf hoppers, ladybugs, plant bugs, and a few tipulidae spotted out and about. At one point I saw a nice, medium-sized, round brown beetle I hoped to catch or at least photograph, but he quickly dropped off the plant he was on and hid in the dense grasses. On this outing, MANY green blowflies were spotted and I managed to catch one with a net. I also caught many other flying insects while on this outing that I couldn’t ID until examining them when I got home. Caught with a net also were: a diptera from the long-legged flies family, a family muscidae diptera, and two thick-legged hoverfly. Caught by hand (just directly catching with a container): plume moth, mosquito.

Levee:

USA, California, Placer County, Roseville, 38.726021° N 121.488648° W, 8m, 21 April 2020 Coll: K. Ball
Method: Hand+containers, Net
Time: 6:00 PM - 6:45 PM

Took an outing to another patch of overgrown grasses and vegetation on a road-side. The road ran over the levee, so the field was on an incline that led down to a creek. Immediately upon getting out of the car, I saw a butterfly on the gravely part of the side of the road and chased it around a little bit. Unfortunately, it eluded me and escaped to a field on the other side of the road. Looking around in the plants, again, more leaf hoppers (but fewer than at the other roadside field I usually visit), plant bugs, and a few ladybugs. After a little walking one direction on the part of the roadside that was still elevated and mostly gravely, I stumbled upon a dead cow. It had MANY MANY flies on it but… I didn’t want to go anywhere near that situation, so I went the other direction. This way led down to the base of the incline and the creekbed with a sort of dirt trail running between the base of the hill / incline the road is on top of and a flat patch of vegetation that fades into the creek as you move off the trail. In a hole under a piece of wood on this trail, a whole bunch of springtails of family entomobryidae. In the vegetation closer to the water, I caught a couple mayflies of the coenagrionidae family with my net. Additionally, swinging my net through the grasses and plants, I managed to catch a western-tailed blue butterfly and a grass miner moth. Also caught with net on this outing: a flesh fly (ID’ed it by its half plumose aristae. Perhaps in the area because of the dead cow?), a tipulidae fly, a non-biting midge, and a common green lacewing. I was able to catch directly with a container: a green shiny blowfly perched on a leaf, an archaeognatha on the dirt trail, a cricket that was on the trail, and a meadow plant bug. I spotted, perched on a leaf, a quite large black beetle I was only able to get blurry pictures of before it sprouted its red wings and flew off quite casually. Kip ID’ed it as a click beetle based on the blurry pics I was able to get.

Species List:

2x Coenagrionidae damselflies
Western-Tailed Blue butterfly
Many green, shiny bottleflies, 2 captured on 2 diff trips
Entomobryidae springtails
A cricket
Meadow plant bug (and many many plant bugs across the three trips)
Grass miner moth
Non-biting midge (one captured, 2 were spotted)
Flesh Fly
Many tipulidae, ladybugs, leafhoppers, aphids
Common green lacewing
Archaeognatha
Mosquito
Plume moth
Long-legged fly
Muscidae
Thick-legged hoverflies
2x Carpenter ants
Drone
Queen

Species Account:

This one was caught Wednesday night, the 22nd, not on one of the outings I described above. But I’m too STOKED about the winged queen carpenter ant I caught directly with a container in my backyard that night at dusk. I was out in my yard trying to track a dragonfly (I think? I never actually got a good glimpse of it, it moved like a blur and there was low light) that was darting around in the low light and NOT PERCHING ANYWHERE. I noticed a very large black winged thing with wings folded scissor-like over its abdomen, so I thought it was some kind of crazy large soldier fly species. Upon looking closer at it in the container, though, it was definitely too ant-like to be a fly; longer antennae, that pinched waist look between the abdomen and thorax, large mandibles, etc. I figured it was a drone ant, as that’s usually what comes to mind when I think of winged ants, and know they tend to be larger than the average ant and less common to see out and about, so I chalked this up as a lucky drone encounter and was happy. Well, when it came time to work on IDing and Inat submissions that night, I realized that the carpenter ant drone I caught in the first outing I described in this journal entry was indeed a carpenter ant drone. Up to this point, like a week after catching it first at this point, I thought it too was a soldier fly of some sort. I learned that to ID a carpenter ant, you look for a single little spine on the pinched area between their thorax and abdomen. After realizing that this ant was a drone and comparing his size to the queen… and after realizing the queen also had the characteristic spine, I realized that the queen was indeed a queen ant!!! Pre-mating with a drone since it still had wings. And I’m just… so stoked about it because like…. What are the odds of just stumbling across something that’s so rarely out and about while not looking for it!?! I think it’s really cool too that I caught a drone and a queen of the same kind of ant with less than a mile between the sites of both the captures and within about one week of each other. It’s perhaps in part due to the fact that queens and drones tend to reach their flighted, adult states at similar times, from what I understand.

Also... if I’m being quite honest…. I’m planning on trying to use the queen and drone I have to make a post that will (hopefully) get a lot of activity on the Facebook page “A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony”.....

USA, California, Placer County, Roseville, 38°44'51.4"N 121°21'25.9"W, 31m, 13 April 2020, Coll: K. Ball
Method: Hand, Net
Time: 4:45 - 6:30

Wanted to find another area with overgrown grasses and wildflowers to poke around in. Wore long sleeves and pants despite it being a mildly warm (but not hot) evening to be better able to move through and dig around in the tall grasses. Clear and sunny day with mild winds that sometimes picked up to be more moderate. Location was found was a field by a park just next to the road in a suburban area Plants here were between thigh high and midriff high. Right off the bat, while looking around some flowering plants next to the sidewalk, I found a family miridae bug that looked similar to other Hemipterans I’ve seen on plants like these, but this one was green (which I have not seen before!). So, I grabbed him in a collection vial and started walking along the fence of a gated off basketball court just beyond the sidewalk, as there was a sort of trail along it bordered by lots of tall wild grasses of various types and some flowering plants. Lots of small, gnat-like diptera (that I still can’t ID ;-;) were out and about in these plants, and I managed to grab a couple with the aspirator. There were also many leaf hoppers out and about, which I didn’t picture and didn’t collect since I already have one and they looked similar to leaf hoppers I’ve already encountered. Lots of ladybugs too! I did some netting through these plants and also found a LOT more of the same kind of plant bugs as the one I found at the start of the trip. These were a common sighting over the duration of the rest of the trip. I flipped a couple rocks in the middle of some tall plants, revealing some darkling beetles, some different ground beetles, ants, and earwigs. Decided to leave the ants and earwigs and suspect the beetles were of a kind already collected in my pan trap, but I took one so I could ID it and be sure. Upon IDing, I found that it was indeed different! Score!! At one point I saw a big black bee and netted it, but he escaped while I was trying to put him in a container :(. I didn’t get a picture and it never came back.

After spending about 45 minutes leafing through these plants and not finding much other than the usual suspects, I proceeded past this first stretch of about 20 feet I was spending all my time up to a point where the trail led out into the field. While moving, I noticed a colony of what I think are either red carpenter ants or fire ants with big heads and mandibles on a coarse dirt/sand substrate on the other side of the fence separating the basketball court. Grabbed one in a collection vial. Before proceeding, I flipped another rock and found a colony of what are either black carpenter ants or odorous house ants (according to some peoples’ Inat suggestions) that actually seemed to have been keeping their eggs under the rock. I caught one of these as well while the others rapidly worked to move the eggs underground in an impressive amount of time. I also found a large earwig under here and couldn’t resist taking this one for my collection. Pressing into the field, I looked at some wild lavender that was gowing and saw it was, as per usual for lavender, very popular with the bees. I spotted a big, hairy bumble bee, and managed to net it and properly transfer it to a container. A small dipteran I suspect is a lesser dung fly (but I am not at all confident with this ID) also slipped into the container from the net. Nearby, I found some European paper wasps messing about in the flowers and managed to nab one of these in my net as well. At this point, it was getting a little late and I was running out of containers, so I pressed into the field a little more to do a quick scan of a part of this field that had some tree-cover and dense vegetation along some stagnant water. I found a cute little caterpillar in the vegetation and photographed/took a video of it but let it be otherwise. Decided not to post to Inat. In addition, in all the vegetation, I saw what I think is a family muscidae diptera. I looked around in the water and in the vegetation surrounding it, hoping to find something like a water strider or maybe a mantis or grasshopper in all the thick foliage. Alas… no luck other than a little non-biting midge and a dead, red centipede. Feeling fairly satisfied with my efforts for the day and knowing I wanted to return to this area to look around more in some of these places I was just getting to, I began to pack it in to head home. On the way back, I went out into another part of the field to inspect a few patches of especially tall plants, but had no luck leafing through them. Walked back to the car running my net through the grass and managed to top the evening off with a small long-horned fairy moth with long antennae, metallic wings, and orange spots. Lucky!!

Species List:
Plant bugs (Miridae)
2x Small diptera I couldn’t ID
1x Diptera I’m guessing is lesser dung fly but not totally sure
Ladybugs
Darkling beetles
Ground beetles
Dermaptera
Fire ants OR Red carpenter ants
Carpenter OR odorous house ants
Bumble bee
European paper wasp
Non-biting midge
Long-horn fairy moth
Family muscidae

Species Account:

The species that caught my eye most this time around was definitely the yellow jacket I caught. Not because it was particularly out of the ordinary, but because it very quickly became a MAD lad once the net came down on it. I know these guys tend to be quite aggressive, so I was already a little nervous about how to go about catching and containing one. Especially becasue 2-3 were in close proximity of each other and I didn’t want my swing to anger the lot of them. Luckily, I spotted the one I caught on a flower with a reasonable amount of space from the others, so I quickly netted it and only it and quickly moved over to a non-yellow jacket zone. Once in the net, I could hear it buzzing, saw it aggressively moving around, and could tell it was quite peeved. When sitting down to try and it into a container, I saw it trying to sting the net it was in repeatedly. Thankfully, I was out with my mom (making bug catching a family affair!), and she helped me keep the net held in a way that wouldn’t allow the insect to escape while I cautiously worked a container into it. At one point, this boi almost slipped out in a gap we accidentally left in the net and… that was SCARY!!! Finally, after safely getting it into the container I had prepared for it, I calmed down, but the yellow jacket stayed heated. It flew around looking for a way out and kept trying to sting the tupperware it was in! Eventually it seemed to settle down and sat still, but it exhibited a behavior I thought was rather strange. It would sort of grab onto the container with its front legs and hold its back legs off it, and it would repeatedly rub them together. Sometimes it would rub them over the length of its abdomen. While doing this it also seemed to try to sting a couple times. This behavior was quite strange to me, and I don’t quite know the cause or reason for it.

Outing 1
USA, California, Sacramento County, Antelope, 38°43'29.3"N 121°23'40.7"W, 27m, 04 April 2020 Coll: K. Ball
Method: Hand+containers, Net, Aspirator
Time: 8:30 AM - 10:45 AM

Went out to look for insects in a grassy field on the other side of my backyard’s fence. Very cloudy and cold morning with low wind at the beginning of the trip and moderate winds and rainfall by the end. Wanted to get out before the rain that was due to fall all weekend. At first I wasn’t sure where exactly to look since there were not many plants around; just some dead trees and short grass. But I quickly discovered a dense patch of ivy in the corner of the field bordering my house and a couple adjacent houses. So, I spent about the first hour of this trip digging around in the dead leaves under the ivy and looking through the foliage. First, I found a few entomobryidae collembola crawling around on a group of ivy leaves. Upon digging in the dirt and leaf litter around this area, I found MANY of the same collembolans crawling around in the dirt. More digging didn’t yield much more than a few stray aphids. Eventually I came across an unknown insect, which I got very excited about because it was finally something different. Also I think it’s really cool because I have no idea what it is.

After this, I began to look around on the leaves of several individuals of a different plant growing out of the ivy patches. One of the first things I found doing this was a small diptura. I tried to catch it without a net but missed and didn’t get a very good picture, but it seems to be from muscidae. Continuing my search, I very quickly found a lone assassin bug. For whatever reason I had the impression I would never come across one of these or they’d be too hard to spot, so I was again very excited. I then found another diptera I believe to be from the hybotid dance fly family. Other observations include what seems to be a lepidoptera larva (I’m trusting the iNat recommendation on this one), a boxelder bug, a tiny insect I couldn’t quite ID, a crane fly, and a PACKED community of aphids on several individuals of the plants I was examining. I caught some of these aphids with the aspirator. After a couple hours of searching, it began to rain, so I headed home. As I turned onto my street, another diptura that looked very similar to the muscidae I couldn’t catch landed on a fence next to me. I managed to net it and put it into a container.

Aside for the last diptera and the aphids, any insects I caught were caught merely by forcing them into my containers or quickly trapping them in one.

Outing 2
USA, California, Sacramento County, Antelope, 38°43'29.3"N 121°23'40.7"W, 25m, 07 April 2020 Coll: K. Ball
Method: Hand+containers, Net, Aspirator
Time: 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM

I wanted to go out and look for insects near a water source. So, I went out to a riparian zone on the side of a road near my house that leads down to a creek that goes through my neighborhood. But, I found so many insects in the overgrown weeds and grasses while walking to the creek that I ended up staying in this small patch of overgrown vegetation on the side of the road the duration of the trip. It was a sunny afternoon, not too warm, but not cold by any means. Low wind. Slowly progressing through the vegetation, I kept my eye on all the grasses and leaves and would frequently stop to leaf through some of the plants and examine the leaves more carefully. The first thing I noticed here were several butterflies flying around and perching on tall flowering plants growing in the area. I was determined to net one by the end of the trip, and indeed, near the very end I was able to catch one while it perched by netting it from behind. I believe it’s from family papilionidae. In the leaves and blades of grass, I found large, soft, green larva I can’t ID, A LOT of leaf hoppers, a several lady beetle larvae, a green lacewing, Soldier beetles, and a yellow diptura with red eyes I don’t have a good enough picture of to ID. In a fallen log amidst all the vegetation, I found a very active velvety tree ant colony (and even saw them catch an aphid!) that I captured a few individuals from via aspirator. In the branches of a tree in the area I found more ants that seemed to be feeding on galls. Also hanging from the branches of a nearby tree and spinning silk were many of what I believe to be a larvae of something from lepidoptera. Finally, while leaving, I managed to find and net a damselfly of family coenagrionidae. Very successful outing, and I want to return to this location at some point. I feel like I only scratched the surface of the diversity in this area, and I didn’t even get down to the creekbed.

Species List

Collembola family entomobryidae
Aphids
Unknown insect from ivy patch dirt/dead leaves
Small diptura I couldn’t catch that seemed to be muscidae
Also muscidae I caught in net on way home (not posted to iNat b/c… I have many fly pics already)
Assassin Bug
Dance fly
Unknown lepidoptera larva from grassy field
Boxelder bog
Tiny insect I can’t quite ID by the picture (and didn’t catch)
Cranefly
Papilionidae butterfly
Large, green, soft, larva
Leafhoppers
Lady beetle larva
Green Lacewing
Soldier Beetles
Yellow diptura with red eyes
Velvety tree ants
Ants feeding on galls
Lepidoptera larvae hanging from trees and spinning silk
Coenagrionidae damselfly

Species Account

The species that caught my attention most was the California Pipevine Swallowtail. I saw quite a few of these all perching on the same kind of flower on my second outing. In part it’s because I have been dying to catch a butterfly all semester… But I either never see them around, or when I do, I don’t have my net on me. I didn’t expect to see butterflies on this outing to a creek off the side of the road. Luckily, the path I tried to take to the creek was dotted with some flowering plants that seemed to be attracting the butterflies. I tried to catch one that was flying around and perching on different flowers, but I was too cautious and slow and whiffed the net swing. After helplessly watch this lad fly circles around me back and forth between just within reach (save for some spiny plants between us) and just way too far away. Soon, none were left around me… I missed my chance. But, I went on with collecting figuring they’d be back since I saw quite a few all across the immediate area when first arriving. And indeed, within half an hour or so, they were back. At first, I tried to catch a group of three that were flying together figuring it’d be easy to catch one from out of the group. But they moved out of reach before I even had a chance and flew off. It looked like they were playing; it was kinda cute. Finally… One perched on a flower near me, and I quickly approached from behind and swung without hesitation. At long last… I had caught my first butterfly.